A World to Explore

Another bioerosion mystery from those fascinating Upper Ordovician rocks around Cincinnati. Above you see a flat, bifoliate trepostome bryozoan (probably Peronopora) with pock holes scattered across its surface. At first you may think, after reading so many blog posts here, that these are again the simple cylindrical boring Trypanites, but then you note that they are shallow and have raised rims so that they look like little meteorite craters. These holes thus represent tiny organisms on the bryozoan surface while it was alive. The bryozoan grew around these infesters, producing the reaction tissue of the rims. This is a kind of preservation called bioclaustration (literally, “walled-in life” from the same root in claustrophobia and cloisters). The specimen is from locality C/W-149 (Liberty Formation near Brookville, Franklin County, Indiana; 39º 28.847′ N, 84º 56.941′ W).This is another trepostome bryozoan with these rimmed pits. It is from locality C/W-153 (Bull Fork Formation near Maysville, Mason County, Kentucky; 38º 35.111′ N, 083º 42.094′ W). The pits are more numerous and have more pronounced reaction rims.A closer view. One of the interesting questions is whether these pits are also borings. Did they cut down into the bryozoan skeleton at the same time it was growing up around them? We should be able to answer that by making a cross-section through the pits to see what their bases look like. The bryozoan walls should be either cut or entire.This is an older image I made back in the days of film to show the density of the rimmed pits in the same bryozoan as above. If we assume that the pit-maker was a filter-feeding organism, how did it affect the nutrient intake of the host bryozoan? Maybe the infester had a larger feeding apparatus and took a larger size fraction of the suspended food? (This could be a project where we apply aerosol filtration theory.) Maybe the bryozoan suffered from a cut in its usual supply of food and had a stunted colony as a result? These are questions my students and I plan to pursue this summer and next year.